1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is that of the presentation, modification and validation of the aeronautical flight plans presented on aircraft cockpit visualization devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Aircraft cockpits contain several visualization screens intended to present to the pilot the necessary information for piloting or navigation. By means of man-machine interfaces the pilot can control, modify and validate this information. Generally, the flight plans are presented in text form. The screen displays a cartographic representation of the overflown terrain containing the flight plan with its various waypoints. This cartographic representation includes a table containing several rows. Each row represents a waypoint and supplies a certain amount of data relating to this waypoint such as, for example, the provisional time of transit, fuel consumption, etc.
This representation has a certain number of drawbacks. It only represents the flight phase of the craft and includes no information relating to the taxiing phase, towards the runway or the stand. This representation is sequential. Each row corresponds to one waypoint and all the waypoints are treated in the same way, whereas they may, for example, be separated by very different distances. Thus, whatever the distance between two points, the display between these waypoints is the same. Moreover, the various actions to perform to provide or look ahead to the various phases of the flight are not present and are only accessible on other visualization screens and by other means.
The Applicant has filed a patent application published under the reference FR 2 969 124 and titled “Procédé d'affichage temporel de la mission d'un aéronef” (“Method for time-based display of an aircraft mission”) proposing a different way of presenting aeronautical flight plans. In this way of presenting, the various steps of the flight plan are displayed in a graphic window containing a scaled time axis or Timeline, the various steps being displayed opposite the time of their performance.